I'd like to bring back an article, more analytical on this paratox (the title, Why You Should Never Pay For Online Dating, speaks a lot), from the old and now dead OkCupid blog.
Funnily, this post was deleted just after the acquisition from the Match Group in 2011.
https://web.archive.org/web/20100821041938/http://blog.okcup...
Latest discussion on this:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33163930